: Are automatically generated spam backlinks that I didn't create likely to be a negative SEO attack from a competitor? In last 10 days, my website traffic suddenly increased. Yesterday I noticed

@Bryan171

Google is pretty good at detecting link schemes, especially automatically generated link schemes. Nowadays they just ignore those incoming links, that way you won't have any advantages or disadvantages from these links.

So I wouldn't spend a lot of time at it. It's better to spend your time at creating quality content and improve the user experience.

At the webmaster central help forums I haven't seen a lot of negative SEO examples where Google didn't ignore the link schemes already. If it is the case, just drop a message in there and if the Top Contributors (including me) see a reason to escalate your example, they will escalate it to the team.

Regards, Peter

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@Odierno851

I prefer search console link data over any link analysis tool for my own site, because it gives me more accurate data. Ahrefs sometimes show more backlinks, that Google might already ignore it on their calculation. All tools crawl same page differently and you've to focus on only what Google see on your page. So I prefer search console link data for my own website. For competition analysis third party tools are fine.
You've to use disavow tool (because 300+ bad links on daily basis is harmful), when you don't have strong backlinks profile. If wikipedia does not use that tool then it's fine, because they have too much quality links, but if your site only have 3 quality links and 300 are bad links then I strongly recommended to use disavow tool.
You don't really need to add nofollow link on disavow file, since Google does not pass PageRank to nofollow link.


I know you can't spent much time on those things, but your competitor will give up after some time, so you don't have to upload disavow file for a long time.

If you upload disavow file on weekly basis then it's totally fine. Google don't penalize your site immediately after they see too many bad links point to you. They wait for some time, they crawl same page multiple time, and if they see links are not removed and it is still present there for a long time, then they consider those links on their algorithm.

You also said your site traffic is increased, so I will check more deep into my analytic tool to see weather those traffic are real or some bot or ping back tool requesting my page. Also ignore ahrefs/moz matrics value, Google have strong spam link algorithm which ignore those links on their calculation, while other tools are not intelligent to ignore it, and hence they increase your site authority on bad backlinks as well.

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@Harper822

The backlink concept that leads to higher rank has been negelected from long time ago. The major rank nowdays is built upon content quality which is identified by several algorithms and techniques.

In addition, the websites source of those links will be regarded as links farms with bad quality and they will not play any important rule for your website indexing rate.

The Conclusion:
There is no any negative effect on your website.

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